Why the Green Party is shit

[Pickman's model]

For real? A minority of the populace pin the tail on the donkey once every five years and the declared winner has free reign to not do anything they promised once at the levers of power. That's democracy?

no, the unelected monarch has free reign and her government has free rein.

 

[Citizen66]

no, the unelected monarch has free reign and her government has free rein.

I've got minus GCSEs and work in a coal mine though.

 

[Pickman's model]

I've got minus GCSEs and work in a coal mine though.

as a canary?

 

[Trendy Lefty]

no, the unelected monarch has free reign and her government has free rein.

Our unelected monarch doesn't have much power and those she does are largely ceremonial, certainly nothing like the absolute rule of the monarch in other countries.

You're wrong to say we live in a oligarchy.

 

[free spirit]

As nice as this would be to assume I think that it would be wrong to do so. To take one example, as treelover the party in Sheffield has been inundated with business people who are working with a lot of students who pre-2010 would have probably been Lib Dems, and we all know by now the approach of the Brighton Green council to picketlines.

I missed this earlier btw.

That's the sort of contribution I was hoping for.

Business people covers quite a range of people though, from the suited and booted brigade with audis, mercs etc, to those who run small businesses, drive a van etc. treelover any more info on what you were meaning by 'business people'?

 

[butchersapron]

Sure but it doesn't seem to me that having representation the town halls is a totally bad thing, just so long as it is actually expressing the interests of a politically conscious mass of people, rather than being arbitrarily picked by bunch of floating voters who think democracy is some sort of shopping between 'brands' ...

I don't think the 'politically conscious mass of people' bit is needed as regards formal voting. The collective self-recognising and long running communities that allow that to even happen, that's our work now. I think we're saying the same thing.

 

[Pickman's model]

Our unelected monarch doesn't have much power and those she does are largely ceremonial, certainly nothing like the absolute rule of the monarch in other countries.

You're wrong to say we live in a oligarchy.

i don't think you know what power is. now, about that constitution, could you link to it?

 

[killer b]

I missed this earlier btw.

That's the sort of contribution I was hoping for.

so sorry we let you down.

 

[Pickman's model]

so sorry we let you down.

 

[Trendy Lefty]

i don't think you know what power is. now, about that constitution, could you link to it?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2561719.stm

I'll repeat though - we don't live in an oligarchy.

 

[Pickman's model]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2561719.stm

I'll repeat though - we don't live in an oligarchy.

that's the bbc website. do you not have another, perhaps more official, website to which you could link?

you can repeat yourself as much as you like, but perhaps you could provide some argument for your assertion.

 

[brogdale]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2561719.stm

I'll repeat though - we don't live in an oligarchy.

Excellent. Perhaps we all ought to vote for a pay rise.

 

[goldenecitrone]

as a canary?

As a canary's cleaner.

 

[Pickman's model]

Trendy Lefty if we live in a democracy how come every act of parliament has to get some monarch's approval?

btw, i'll save you the trouble of trying to find the constitution - there isn't one, they make it up as they go along.

 

[Citizen66]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/bbc_parliament/2561719.stm

I'll repeat though - we don't live in an oligarchy.

A Plutocracy, surely?

 

[Trendy Lefty]

that's the bbc website. do you not have another, perhaps more official, website to which you could link?

you can repeat yourself as much as you like, but perhaps you could provide some argument for your assertion.

BBC is usually quite reliable. But here's another link http://archive.org/stream/britishconstitut00dean/britishconstitut00dean_djvu.txt

I would agree with you in a sense that our country behaves like an oligarchy as we do have that form of power structure where power effectively rests with a small number of people.

However, the BIG difference is that oligarchy is not always ruled by the wealthy, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by either wealth or by bloodlines – as in a monarchy.

 

[Pickman's model]

A Plutocracy, surely?

s/he doesn't know.

 

[Pickman's model]

BBC is usually quite reliable. But here's another link http://archive.org/stream/britishconstitut00dean/britishconstitut00dean_djvu.txt

I would agree with you in a sense that our country behaves like an oligarchy as we do have that form of power structure where power effectively rests with a small number of people.

However, the BIG difference is that oligarchy is not always ruled by the wealthy, as oligarchs can simply be a privileged group, and do not have to be connected by either wealth or by bloodlines – as in a monarchy.

yes. your new link is to an 1893 book written by an american academic. i'm not persuaded that that is up to date.

 

[free spirit]

Surveys of new members show that they are overwhelmingly on the left.

A check on way people have joined the party throws up comments like “I joined because the Green Party is firmly on the left,” “The Green Party has policies for social justice,” and “I joined the Greens because I am a lifelong socialist.”

I can't verify this, but this is a quote from a Green Left member writing in the morning star

 

[Trendy Lefty]

Trendy Lefty if we live in a democracy how come every act of parliament has to get some monarch's approval?

btw, i'll save you the trouble of trying to find the constitution - there isn't one, they make it up as they go along.

Well my point is that the queen has the power to dissolve parliament if she wants, but the chances of this happening are next to none as these are only notional powers. And yes, she does does have to approve acts of parliament but when has she ever not approved them? Most of her actual powers evolve round acting as a ceremonial figurehead and promoting national unity.
In reality the queen may be an unelected head of the state but the powers she has are very little. I am no royalist either.

 

[butchersapron]

I can't verify this, but this is a quote from a Green Left member writing in the morning star

That's the green left - a faction with the green party - and that's the leading voice of the green left in fact,someone i gen have a lot of time for. He needs it to be true. It might well be. But in electoral terms - so what.

 

[ferrelhadley]

Well my point is that the queen has the power to dissolve parliament if she wants, but the chances of this happening are next to none

Gough Whitlam

 

[butchersapron]

She didn't dissolve parliament when she felt like it in this case here. This is no response to this mans post.

 

[Pickman's model]

Well my point is that the queen has the power to dissolve parliament if she wants, but the chances of this happening are next to none as these are only notional powers. And yes, she does does have to approve acts of parliament but when has she ever not approved them? Most of her actual powers evolve round acting as a ceremonial figurehead and promoting national unity.
In reality the queen may be an unelected head of the state but the powers she has are very little. I am no royalist either.

but her head's on all the coins and on all the stamps just to make her feel better. the royal crest's in every courtroom for no particular reason, i suppose. the government is not our government, it is her majesty's government. and as i say, you've yet to say what you mean by power. she's a fuck of a lot more power than you or i do, that's for sure.

 

[J Ed]

but her head's on all the coins and on all the stamps just to make her feel better. the royal crest's in every courtroom for no particular reason, i suppose. the government is not our government, it is her majesty's government. and as i say, you've yet to say what you mean by power. she's a fuck of a lot more power than you or i do, that's for sure.

To me a better example of how we live in an oligarchy rather than a democracy is how, despite the fact that none of the main three (I suppose four now), parties are openly in favour of NHS privatisation all of these parties will undoubtedly accelerate that process.

 

[Pickman's model]

To me a better example of how we live in an oligarchy rather than a democracy is how, despite the fact that none of the main three (I suppose four now), parties are openly in favour of NHS privatisation all of these parties will undoubtedly accelerate that process.

i know, i was just bored and fooling about.

 

[free spirit]

That's the green left - a faction with the green party - and that's the leading voice of the green left in fact,someone i gen have a lot of time for. He needs it to be true. It might well be. But in electoral terms - so what.

In electoral terms, then if true, then there's an increasingly majority left of centre party that states it's against austerity, and neoliberalism, wants to end the WTO, wants a £10 minimum wage etc That has increase it's polling from under 1% to 6-8% or so, and has a membership level that's rapidly approaching that of the lib dems.

I just found a GP tweet from last week claiming they've hit 30,000 members in England and Wales, with another 8k in Scotland. So my original post about them doubling their E&W membership this year was actually right.

Compare that with Left Unity, whose membership has apparently levelled off at around 2000, and is embroiled in infighting over what if any level of co-operation to have with TUSC. The TUSC are least are targeting the numbers of candidates needed to get election broadcasts, but are going to be pretty over stretched to even get to that level never mind actually run proper campaigns in all those constituencies.

Realistically, 6 months out from the election it seems that, like it or not, the Green Party is the only potentially left of centre anti-austerity political party that has the momentum to make the most significant impact at the election. Though even integrating that volume of new members into a party is going to be a massive task for them, and frankly I doubt a lot of their local parties are really going to know what's hit them as they're used to bumbling along with a small group doing the minimum necessary to not lose their deposit.

I've only scanned it, and haven't had chance to really take it all in, but some of their economic policy proposals look pretty radical, and a lot more detailed than I was expecting. Some stuff pretty sensible, some like removing the ability of the banks to actually create electronic credit / effectively ending fractional reserve banking would have massive consequences if implemented. It definitely doesn't read like another neoliberalist economic policy though.

Interesting discussion about this on the left unity blog here

There is no point in our trying to deny it: the Green Party is certainly now a party of the left and is even – somewhat fuzzily – anti-capitalist. Caroline Lucas has said on TV that she is proud of the party’s ‘socialist traditions’ and both she and the party’s current leader, Natalie Bennet, have publicly said that they are comfortable with being described as ‘watermelons’ (green on the outside but red on the inside;

Obviously it helps that I come from an environmental background anyway, but the greens were always pretty useless and hadn't nailed their colours to the mast on neoliberalism properly last time i really considered them a decade or so ago.

There is the issue of the greens taking votes from Labour and potentially letting the tories sneak back in, but UKIP are currently taking more votes from Labour, and the greens are taking more votes from the lib dems. It probably only becomes a major issue if the tories win back a significant portion of the 24% of their vote that's gone to UKIP.

Still not made my mind up what to do though. It probably depends how the various campaigns look locally really

 

[butchersapron]

What on earth do you mean by

There is the issue of the greens taking votes from Labour and potentially letting the tories sneak back in, but UKIP are currently taking more votes from Labour, and the greens are taking more votes from the lib dems. It probably only becomes a major issue if the tories win back a significant portion of the 24% of their vote that's gone to UKIP.

All that late night research to show that the glibness owners class who think they're lefties are going to vote labour or green - sort of like exactly as i said.

Still, shame on the rest of us for not catering for you.

 

[ViolentPanda]

The party here is changing, more small business people seem to be getting involved, there always were quite a few, but they seem to dominate now, business seems to be a key feature of them now

if people want to vote for that its up to them, but for me its a step too far.

Not really a surprise. When a party surpasses a certain level of public awareness, those who see themselves as *politically-pragmatic will always turn up and attempt to take advantage.

*And yes, by "politically-pragmatic", I do mean the equivalent of "March violets".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yeah a lot of their new voters will be the same divs who voted Libdem in 2010

Come the hour, come trevhagl!